Almerimar marina

Iola
Lesley & Derek Mercer
Sun 25 Sep 2011 07:47

36:44.1N 03:45.1W

 

This is a brief update as I am trying to catch up with the blog.

 

We left our anchorage as planned, to find a trawler had entered our bay and was busy fishing it!  Most annoying, but presumably they are allowed to.  His nets must have been dragging along the bottom as it was only 12 m deep where he was, and so scooped up everything.

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There was only a light breeze, so I motorsailed to the marina in Almerimar.  Had some amazing sights of flying fish .  They suddenly take off as the bow of IOLA gets near them, and they can fly up to 10 metres before landing in the water again.  We saw a couple of dolphins, and also at one point, a larger fish leapt out of the water, splashed back in and repeated this.  I think there were some hungry teeth close behind him.  I don’t know the outcome, but he did not make a third appearance.

 

The coastline here is weird.  They have covered most of the hillside in plastic to carry out hydroponic cultivation, and grow these awful tasteless tomatoes which, we are told, are exported all over Europe.  We also bought some apples which were so “wet” that the seeds inside had started sprouting!  (Don’t get me wrong, almost all the fruit here is delicious and ripe, we just had a couple of mishaps.)  I think the plastic makes the area quite ugly, but it probably turns fairly unproductive land into something useful. 

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We came to the marina and frankly were seriously disappointed.  The place was half empty, but they put us in really awkward berth between two other catamarans, and trying to manoeuvre IOLA in a crosswind is really tricky.  Got her in OK, but the marina turned out to be huge.  It takes 45 mns to walk from our berth to the marina office.  To use wifi, you have to go to the office and purchase little tickets with a username and password – crazy.  Security was non existent, and the whole place was tired.  I was not surprised that they are offering 20% off next year’s berthing, if you stay there for the winter.  We decided, therefore, that it was time to move on the next day, especially as Lesley had read about the Alcazaba castle in Almeira.